At Thunderbird, like at many other organizations, we rely on data to make product decisions. But here, unlike many other organizations, we balance our goal of collecting useful, high-quality data with our goal to give users meaningful choice and control over their own data. The Thunderbird data collection program was created to ensure we achieve both goals whenever we make a change to how we collect data in our product.

Thunderbird's data collection practices originate from the same process used for Firefox.

Our commitment to data collection grounded in:

• Necessity - We collect only as much data as is necessary when we can demonstrate a clear business case for that data
• Privacy - We give users meaningful choices and control over their own data
• Transparency - We make our decisions about data collection public and accessible
• Accountability - We assign accountability for the design, approval, and implementation of data collection

Owner: Philipp Kewisch

Data Stewards:

• Andrei Hajdukewycz
• Patrick Cloke

Key Roles for Data Collection

While the number of people involved in data collection can vary by area, there are two roles necessary for any project:

• Data requester - the person requesting data to be collected
• Data steward - the person who ensures the data collection process is followed and that requested data complies with Thunderbird's policies

In some cases a data steward may escalate concerns to the Trust and Legal teams as well as the Thunderbird Council. They are the teams responsible for defining Thunderbird's data collection policies and can field questions about internal policy and laws governing user privacy.

Thunderbird always strives to make data reviews public. However, there are sometimes limited sets of circumstances when we may conduct our reviews in a private bug; for example, a service is part of an agreement where the partnership is not yet public. These reviews will be made public once the actual data collection begins.

Requesting Data Collection

As the process is mainly based on Firefox's data review process, please see the Firefox data review process on how to request a new data review. For issues that don't have a specific component, please file in Thunderbird :: General.

Assets involved in data review can be found in the Mozilla data-review repository.